How to Lose Your Soul by Not Using Your Hands
It was 8:45 AM, March of 2008. I was slumped into a convention chair on the holo-deck of the Washington DC Hilton, listening to a slight, scholarly lady talk about immigration policy. The morning's latte was dancing a slow waltz in my head with the ghosts of the previous evening's martinis. All around me dellow felegates from the National League of Cities' annual descent upon the nation's capitol sipped coffee or dozed under ten gallon hats as the lady, Tamar Jacoby, argued that Joe Farmer needs access to cheap foreign labor, i.e. illegal aliens.
Then she said something that pulled me up in my seat. Little alarms were going off in my brain, so I looked down on my notebook to see what righty had written. Ms. Jacoby had said:
"A large percentage of them work in dirty, demeaning, low paid jobs that native born Americans no longer want to do: busboys, chambermaids, farmhands, nurses' aides, sweatshop workers, on the assembly line, in meat packing plants."
I shook the martini ghosts out of my head and listened. She described an America that is older and more educated, and not willing to do "unskilled work". I look down on my own rough and misshapen hands. Hmmmm.
She goes on to make the case that the American of tomorrow will be heady and shiny, graduating with honors along with his friends and classmates, festooned all over with gold stars and blue ribbons, comparing their trophies for participation at the mall where they consume the proper products in languidly prowling packs, waiting for the day when they will be placed in a skilled, non demeaning positions of oblique responsibility. Obviously these uber-Americans will need unskilled, uneducated foreigners to clear the plates, harvest the corndogs and empty the chamberpots.
At first I thought I' was just offended by the idea of an underclass, a shadow segment of our society with a hungry belly that the rest of us rule because of their need to fill it.
But there's something more. We are also hurt by our own aversion to simple physical work.
This didn't really strike home to me until the recent "financial crisis" began to unwind. For years my wife has been asking me what it is Americans do, exactly. Most of us (If WalMart wages aren't sucking you into the underclass) seem to make a living providing services to other Americans. Chefs, CPAs and surgeons all charge each other enough to make a sweet living. "But if so few of us actually make anything," my wife asked "where does all the money come from?"
"I don't know." I replied "Maybe its the savings from all the illegal beef butchers and diaper changers."
It turns out some of our most skilled and educated financiers conspired to build a house of mirrors that crashed under the weight of its own reflections. What they did to the entire world should be criminal, but instead we have chosen to open our forgiving arms and wallets to these prodigals.
But the original prodigal son was contrite. Ours have flown back to Daddy unrepentant, in sleek private jets, sheepishly grinning fops with silk hankies who need a new stake after foolishly gambling away their ready cash. Of course Daddy is broke too, so the sharecoppers in the valley will have to pony up Junior's bailout because, after all, if he can't generously spread his money around how shall the little people survive?
Well I have news for the dandies of high finance. You are the little people. I know working people here in Kodiak who came from Mexico and Guatemala and the Phillipines who work their whole lives gutting fish and sorting mail who have more honor and nobility than a thousand bailout sucking CEOs. Their character is the true bedrock of our society, and it is built from dirty hands and sore backs.
And isn't true value created by the one who catches the fish, builds the car and invests in the factory? That's real capitalism. You work to make or do something and are paid a purchase price or wage. Then you take that money and risk it to make more. The emerging pseudo capitalism in which morbidly obese corporations are "too big to let them fail" neatly combines the worst aspects of Marxism and fascism. Corpogovernment will preserve our failing businesses like Lenin's waxy corpse for the good of the people. But what should we expect from a culture that no longer values the contributions of those who actually do something? Somehow we got it backwards. We seem to believe that money makes people and that character comes from strength.
You know it is ever true that the best of us, he kindest, those with real patience and generosity seem invariably to be those who have known real hardship and adversity. If you ask me every kid in America should have to work in the sweatshop before he gets his Gap t shirt. And every financial executive who gets a bailout should carry chamberpots for lettuce pickers.
Then she said something that pulled me up in my seat. Little alarms were going off in my brain, so I looked down on my notebook to see what righty had written. Ms. Jacoby had said:
"A large percentage of them work in dirty, demeaning, low paid jobs that native born Americans no longer want to do: busboys, chambermaids, farmhands, nurses' aides, sweatshop workers, on the assembly line, in meat packing plants."
I shook the martini ghosts out of my head and listened. She described an America that is older and more educated, and not willing to do "unskilled work". I look down on my own rough and misshapen hands. Hmmmm.
She goes on to make the case that the American of tomorrow will be heady and shiny, graduating with honors along with his friends and classmates, festooned all over with gold stars and blue ribbons, comparing their trophies for participation at the mall where they consume the proper products in languidly prowling packs, waiting for the day when they will be placed in a skilled, non demeaning positions of oblique responsibility. Obviously these uber-Americans will need unskilled, uneducated foreigners to clear the plates, harvest the corndogs and empty the chamberpots.
At first I thought I' was just offended by the idea of an underclass, a shadow segment of our society with a hungry belly that the rest of us rule because of their need to fill it.
But there's something more. We are also hurt by our own aversion to simple physical work.
This didn't really strike home to me until the recent "financial crisis" began to unwind. For years my wife has been asking me what it is Americans do, exactly. Most of us (If WalMart wages aren't sucking you into the underclass) seem to make a living providing services to other Americans. Chefs, CPAs and surgeons all charge each other enough to make a sweet living. "But if so few of us actually make anything," my wife asked "where does all the money come from?"
"I don't know." I replied "Maybe its the savings from all the illegal beef butchers and diaper changers."
It turns out some of our most skilled and educated financiers conspired to build a house of mirrors that crashed under the weight of its own reflections. What they did to the entire world should be criminal, but instead we have chosen to open our forgiving arms and wallets to these prodigals.
But the original prodigal son was contrite. Ours have flown back to Daddy unrepentant, in sleek private jets, sheepishly grinning fops with silk hankies who need a new stake after foolishly gambling away their ready cash. Of course Daddy is broke too, so the sharecoppers in the valley will have to pony up Junior's bailout because, after all, if he can't generously spread his money around how shall the little people survive?
Well I have news for the dandies of high finance. You are the little people. I know working people here in Kodiak who came from Mexico and Guatemala and the Phillipines who work their whole lives gutting fish and sorting mail who have more honor and nobility than a thousand bailout sucking CEOs. Their character is the true bedrock of our society, and it is built from dirty hands and sore backs.
And isn't true value created by the one who catches the fish, builds the car and invests in the factory? That's real capitalism. You work to make or do something and are paid a purchase price or wage. Then you take that money and risk it to make more. The emerging pseudo capitalism in which morbidly obese corporations are "too big to let them fail" neatly combines the worst aspects of Marxism and fascism. Corpogovernment will preserve our failing businesses like Lenin's waxy corpse for the good of the people. But what should we expect from a culture that no longer values the contributions of those who actually do something? Somehow we got it backwards. We seem to believe that money makes people and that character comes from strength.
You know it is ever true that the best of us, he kindest, those with real patience and generosity seem invariably to be those who have known real hardship and adversity. If you ask me every kid in America should have to work in the sweatshop before he gets his Gap t shirt. And every financial executive who gets a bailout should carry chamberpots for lettuce pickers.
5 comments:
Thanks for expressing, and in a much more eloquent way, an issue we have been discussing lately, the fact that no one involved in the financial debacles we are all reeling from seems to be making or doing anything concrete--thus the air castles and houses of cards that disappear before our eyes or crash into a flattened pile in the blink of an eye. Last week a kid behind the counter at a restaurant was talking to another worker about '840' or some such number and was surprised when I asked him, What's that, the new minimum wage? He said, Yeah, and we had a good discussion over how hard one works for that wage, basically 60 minutes of an hour, compared to those who both don't want anyone guaranteed a minimum wage AND wouldn't be caught dead trying to live on it themselves. People like Limbaugh who make millions basically passing gas for a living
without producing anything another human being can eat, wear, or use for anything but raising blood pressure seem to have nothing but distain for working people and particularly their right to negotiate any terms for the labor or production. More calluses and less callousness!
Unfortunately, the scholarly lady was right. Hopefully, not to such an extent, but this generation of Americans is lazy. The young men and women of today have been born to XBoxs, mass doses of cable television and computer surfing. I am sure no other generation has spent so much time sitting on their asses.
It is sad, but I think this downturn in our economy in our nation will be an eye opener for thousands maybe millions of the "lazy kids". It may be what our nation needs to kick some people in the butt.
Good article Terry, I didn't know you were a conservative.You missed the point which is our missing workers don't need to work in order to eat.....Good Fishing
Right on. There is a big disparity between a processing worker and a fisherman in terms of reward for the labor put in to the production of our fish products. At one time the plants were filled with fishermens wives and college kids, now we let the little brown people do the grunt work.
Write more Terry.
"Let the market control it." Supply and demand" How often have you heard the Capitalists espouse those two ideas?
Americans will still work and do menial labor if the price is right. but they want to make a living wage. Something that will support their families. Why do ou think the illegal come here? They can make a living wage for their families in their country off the suppressed wages they make here. The illegal workforce is what these same Capitalists use to suppress the labor market and "supply and demand".
Think about it. If there were no illegal workforce, companies would be forced to offer a higher wage to attract workers. (what else attracts workers?) Sure it would raise the price of goods and services. But people would be making more money so more could afford to buy things creating more customers. And maybe more people would be tempted to give up welfare lessening tax burdens on us all. Not to mention the cost to us all of the illegal workforce. Gee, companies get to drive down the price of wages by hiring illegals and pass all associated costs off to the taxpayers of the US. What a deal.
Get rid of the illegal workforce, force companies to pay a living wage and then see how lazy Americans are.
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